Abstract : In mountain rivers with coarse sediments, the ratio of water depth to sediment diameter (h/d) is relatively small especially under the condition of shallow water depth. Therefore, the vertical velocity distribution along the river cannot be described accurately with traditional logarithmic or logarithmic-wake law. In this paper, flume experiments were carried out with two kinds of sediments (glass beads d=1.4 cm and pinpong d=4 cm) to test the influence of coarse sediment on vertical velocity di